Economics and Networks of Exchange

China （中国）, also known as the People's Republic of China (or Republic of China if you want to debate the "real" China), is an important country in today's age. They lead the world in many aspects. They have the second largest military budget, world's largest population, ever expanding cultural influence around the globe with their networks of exchange, and striving for my scientific progress.

With this in mind, I think I want to take a different approach to a victory because of my experience with PC strategy games. I've played Warcraft III, Starcraft II, and Age of Empires II to name a few. I think it would be too easy for me to do a domination victory. Instead, I'm going to attempt a cultural victory. Here is a video (for those interested) to obtain a cultural victory in Civilization V.

I will play on normal and hard difficulty. I currently have played 25 hours since the semester started. I'd like to note that I have the Gold edition and Brave New World expansion pack. My information might be slightly different depending on which version of Civilization V you are playing.


Trade in this game depends on connections between the capital, cities, and other civilizations. Between your capital and other cities you may establish, you can link them with roads (and railroads later in the game). Harbors can increase the amount of trade by using the sea.

Once a trade route is established, the user can earn additional gold. If they so choose to, they can trade with cities they created and increase food, work, and science can be traded to increase the output of one selected.

Connecting this with the second theme, Economics and Networks of Exchange, China in Civilization V develops a dense network and hierarchies. Hierarchies in this case being the capital city (in which the user controls). The game allows flexibility between maritime and land type empires. I built a city with around 12 cities (conquering four other civilizations) and enjoyed hogging 90% of a continent. I had control over international trade, large military to help colonize, controlled large amounts of land and people, and developed technology to surpass my foes. 

My Chinese civilization is on the path to much like China is today. I had the world's largest population, advancing scientifically, and enough cultural influence on the rest of the world that all other civilizations envied me. Some of the success was due to large amounts of trading with other countries and spreading my religion and influence to citizens of their civilizations.

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Initial Experience and Patterns of Population

My first experience of the game (Civilization V) started at the beginning of this semester with this class. That being said, I am familiar with RTS (Real-Time Strategies) and PC games that are similar to this game (Command and Conquer, Age of Empires). The game's combat isn't intense compared to other games I played, but that is the point. Civilization V is an experience about building an empire through other means other than war (fresh new take). The turn based system works well with this as it gives you time to make many decisions within one turn. The only thing I find funny is how one turn can be several hundred years. My ruler is apparently immortal.

My civilization game (if you haven't already guessed) is China. I chose them because it ties in with several things. I am an Anthropology/Global Studies with a Chinese track major. I am also enrolled into Chinese history this semester, WH110.

Now, in regards to Patterns of Population, population doesn't have a tremendous effect in the game in the later stages. Early on, it is important for productivity. Since I played on Easy difficulty for my first game, I didn't run into a problem with my population starving. My population just continued to grow, so I didn't have too much control over my population. My first three cities expanded enough to fit PLENTY of people (more people than I could grow in a game to occupy all tiles).

That being said, compared to China's civilization history, there is a problem with overcrowdedness. In the game, I can just conquer other civilizations, take their cities, and my people can move to other places. China has done that in the past, but taken over other civilizations now wouldn't work (United Nations would step in). If anything, this game doesn't consider population within capitals of each city. There wasn't any famine, disease, or natural disaster to worry about with my population. They happily grew without worry.

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